Voice of Tigers, the official radio of the Liberation Tigers of Tamileelam on Sunday said Sri Lankan armed forces have killed 2,018 Tamil civilians in January and February in Vanni and that 700 of the victims were children. The VoT has been airing a program, "Bridging the beloved" (U’ravup Paalam), where civilians have been providing details of their missing family members and whereabouts of the remaining members in the hope of locating their missed ones.
Some families were reporting that children as young as 5 years of age were missing during the artillery barrage by the Sri Lanka Army while they were displacing from a location to another. The radio broadcast has become a main source of information assisting people to find their kin and kith.
The US based Human Rights Watch, in its report issued on 20 February, have also put the civilian casualty figures at 2,000.
Newly obtained information places total civilian casualties at 7,000, with 2,000 deaths, the HRW said.
“During a three-week period from January 20 to February 13, 2009, independent observers in the Vanni collected information on 5,150 civilian casualties-1,123 deaths and 4,027 injuries-from the current fighting. This number was derived from a compilation of reports that recorded individual casualties, the date and place of the attack, and the nature of the attack," the HRW report stated.
Air attacks with cluster bombs, fire bombs and artillery barrage with cluster fitted shells have been systematically deployed by the Sri Lankan forces on civilian targets.
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